法華文句記 8.34

8.34

Regarding “Question: herein,” etc.: the questioner asks why the “Conjured City” chapter merely says “following and pursuing from beginning to end,” but lacks losing each other as in “Faith and Understanding,” or being terrified and entering as in the “Simile” chapter? If they are lacking, then there would be no following and pursuing there. Moreover, it would also permanently diverge from the intermediate and superior [capacities]; how could one use this to analogize that? The intent in the reply is that the methods of employing similes differ. That the text does not happen to use them does not mean the underlying intention is lacking; hence it says, “yet its meaning pervades.” What is meant by “pervades” is that losing and seeing each other is something that intermediate faculties, after gaining awakening, receive and understand today: before there were great or small conversions, it is called turning one's back on the father, as well as clarifying the fault of clearly seeing the father and not recognizing him. In the simile it says “terrified and entered”: although I turned my back on the father, the father does not abandon me and constantly contemplates my capacity; at the inception of that capacity's emergence, there is the sense of being terrified and entering. If we discuss the stimulus and response after forming affinity, when did he ever not follow, just as in the present text? Since it speaks here of meeting in the interval and up to today seeing each other and attaining deliverance, we know that in the interval there was not an absence of losing each other, or being terrified and entering. One should know that following and pursuing is due to being terrified and entering; being terrified and entering brings about seeing each other; seeing each other is due to losing each other. Each brings up one side, but the overarching purport is no different.